With the tremendous growth of the Internet and the availability of volumes of information on an on-demand basis, there has been a growth in the diversity and breadth of services and information available to consumers and correspondingly a growth in what is referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT). In order to provide these services and data, in a tailored fashion and in a manner which is transparent, non-intrusive or demanding on the user (a person or entity consuming a service or data), in terms of steps or actions they may have to take to access the service, everything a user has or interacts with is becoming connected with “things” (devices) and various wireless standards have been developed to provide the connectivity.
Due to the small footprint and extreme low power requirements for many of these IoT devices, there is a pressing need to optimize the power consumption of these devices yet still provide a reliable, low latency and efficient communications capability for services that sip data. That is services that exchange small amounts of data on an infrequent or sporadic basis, or data that is communicated in bursts with relatively large periods of inactivity in between. The ability to operate the IoT devices with battery power and with requirements that call for a long battery life poses a challenge for the wireless communications system.